


last time i saw you we had just split in two

by blackwood (transjon)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Introspection, Kissing, M/M, MAG186 Quiet, discussion of suicide, mentions of parental neglect/abuse, selfcest I guess, sort of alternative ending?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:00:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27407734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transjon/pseuds/blackwood
Summary: “Is this what I would be like?”“Like what?”Martin looks at the other Martin. Over the faded look of him. How rain passes through the edges of him. The way he flickers like a broken television. “So – so viscerally, visibly lonely.”
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood/Martin Blackwood
Comments: 7
Kudos: 107





	last time i saw you we had just split in two

**Author's Note:**

> this episode made me lose my fucking mind
> 
> title is from the origin of love from hedwig & the angry inch

“Is this what I would be like?”

“Like what?”

Martin looks at the other Martin. Over the faded look of him. How rain passes through the edges of him. The way he flickers like a broken television. “So – so viscerally, visibly lonely.”

The other Martin hums. Martin doesn’t think the rain is doing much to him. No droplets gathering or dropping from his hair. 

“Yes. In a way you still are.”

Martin thinks about four knees knocking together in the old, stained tub in Daisy’s safehouse. How Jon would hold him so close to his body he thought he’d break his ribs with the desperation of it. Like giving good CPR. Rib shards finding each other and gluing themselves back together. At least he was breathing again by the end of it. Good CPR breaks ribs. Jon jumpstarting his heart in the Institute carpark. Cables and wires and all that. 

The other Martin’s hair is white. Martin’s is mostly so in the tips. “Not as much as you are.”

“I’m you,” he reminds him gently. He offers his hand out. Martin takes it. It’s cool and calloused and dry. Martin’s hand is damp from the rain but the water melts away where their hands touch. 

“We don’t look the same, y’know?”

The smile he gets in response is neither sad nor happy. Like Martin, it just is. 

“The hair?” 

Martin shrugs. “Yeah,” he agrees, “and the,” he gestures vaguely at the other Martin. “I don’t know how to describe it.”

“You think I’m fading away.”

“Are you?”

The same smile again. “When you leave I will, I suppose.”

The weight of this knowledge is lesser than Martin’d been afraid it’d be. Killing yourself is, in a way, less bad than killing someone else. Martin, no matter how solid and complete on his own – and even solidity is such a relative thing here, where the mud pools and swirls around their feet like whirlpools – is still _him_. 

The gravel somewhere underneath the mud and the water crunches under their feet. Neither of them lets go of the other’s hand. 

“You love him,” the other Martin says quietly. 

“I do,” Martin agrees. He squeezes the hand in his hold. In a way it’s almost too familiar. Jon’s hands are warm and his fingers are long and slender and bony. Martin’s are broad and cool. He remembers holding his own hands. Fingers folded over each other like a house of cards. The comfort of knowing at least those hands he could rely on. 

“You’re scared to.”

Martin hums in a carefully cheerful tone. “A bit.”

The other Martin stops. Martin, attached to him by his hand, comes to a stop as well. “What?” he asks. 

“It used to be just you. Or us, I suppose.”

“Right, right. Well, and mum.”

The other Martin’s eyes are the same as his. In this lighting they’re almost too light. “Do you really think that?”

“What’s that mean?”

“Physically she was there. But when it came to people you could trust – it was just you. Just us.”

Martin goes quiet. He thinks about letting go of the hand. “What are you saying?”

The other Martin steps closer. The blurry edges solidify the closer he gets. The staticky noise fades. When he’s close enough for Martin to see each individual eyelash he can see drops of water start landing in his hair. 

“We have to trust him,” he says. There’s a little bit of feedback static in his voice. “You have to trust him. And it’s terrifying.”

“I trust him,” Martin says helplessly.

“Yes,” the other Martin agrees. “You have to.”

Martin opens his mouth to say that he’s trusted him before. When he didn’t have to. When there was nothing forcing him to. When he’d tried to help Peter and Jon’d begged him to run away with him. He’d told him no, then. Was that distrust? Was that him looking for excuses? 

“So?” he asks reluctantly. “Is this another thing I should be thinking harder about? Consider whether I should trust him? Because I don’t think the alternative to trusting him is going to be very doable.”

“No,” the other Martin says. The smile on his face is faint, but it’s amused. “You should trust him. It’s just difficult, ‘s all.”

Something about that breaks something invisible and intangible within him. Something wavers. Stutters and then comes to life again. Martin takes the next step forward. 

“It’s always just been me,” he says softly.

The other Martin smiles properly this time. “But now it’s different, isn’t it?”

Martin closes the distance between them slowly, softly. He closes his eyes. He doesn’t know if the other Martin does as well, but he thinks he must. They’re the same, after all. 

He doesn’t let go of his hand. His free hand settles lightly on the other Martin’s hip as their lips make contact. The fabric of his sweater is dry until Martin touches it, and then it is damp, first with the water from Martin’s hand, and then with the rain. 

He crackles like static. Martin wonders if this is what it was like for Jon to kiss him, right after the Lonely. The thin skin of his lips feels like it’s been shocked, just slightly. Like licking a battery. He’d done it, once, when he was a child. The other Martin must know that as well. How it’d made him gasp in surprise. How that’d made his mum mad at first, and how she’d laughed, then, almost surprised by her own reaction. He’d expected a punishment that never came. 

He thinks about that memory. About her. 

Awful. Unwell. Both of them, at the same time. The other Martin’s lips are cold and warm at the same time. Martin halfheartedly wonders about warming him up. Jon’d tried so hard to carry him. He’d stood there in the bathroom and rubbed him dry with a fluffy towel like drying a dog after a flea bath. Martin’s hair sticking in every direction. Looking at himself in the fogged up mirror until the layer of condensation started dripping down it. 

“There,” Jon’d said with resolution in his voice. Like just by saying so he’d made something happen. 

“Thank you,” Martin’d said. It’d felt silly. It’d felt like too much. And he, despite himself, had felt _warm_ for the first time in a long time. 

The other Martin doesn’t have Jon. The other Martin barely has himself. The other Martin both exists and doesn’t. For now it’s just Martin again. Martin and his echo. Martin and Martin. His cold-warm lips and his warm-hot tongue that swipes across the seam of his lips just once. Almost apologetic. Almost not. 

“You’re cold,” Martin says when he pulls away. “Is it because of the Lonely?”

“Probably,” the other Martin says. The water on his skin starts drying again. Martin traces a little line from his cheek to the other with one finger. Cheekbone, across the bridge of his nose, the other cheekbone. The skin all clean-shaven and freckled. He wonders, for just a few seconds, whether that, too, is because of the Lonely. He hasn’t bothered with shaving since he got back from there. Something about being too bare for too long. 

“Are you going to be okay?” Martin asks. 

“Do you want to stay?”

“No,” Martin says immediately. Almost feels bad about it, in a way. Asking him and then leaving regardless. Somewhere outside of this place there’s Jon. Somewhere outside of this place there’s – something. Something more solid. Something less dream and more awake. 

The other Martin smiles. He lets go of Martin’s hand. Martin misses the contact immediately. “I’m only here because you are, too.”

“When I leave you’ll go away.”

“Right.”

They’re both quiet for a moment. Martin thinks about grabbing his hand again. He’s going blurry around the edges again. 

“You have to make sacrifices,” the other Martin says in a sort of a sing-song voice. “Is it suicide to kill another version of yourself?”

“Don’t,” Martin says, but then, after a second, “is it?”

The other Martin chuckles. “No,” he says. “To answer your question. I won’t be okay. But,” he says, “I won’t be not okay either.”

“You’ll just stop existing.”

The other Martin smiles faintly. “Isn’t that scary? To think that you’ll just stop existing? Nothing more dramatic. No eternal suffering, all that. Just – poof.” 

Martin doesn’t say anything. Somewhere outside of the range of his hearing there’s the vibration of soundwaves. He pushes them away. “Yes,” he says. 

“Go find your boyfriend,” the other Martin says. He’s dry as bone. Martin, himself, is increasingly aware of how heavy his clothes are with the rain. 

“If you’re sure,” he says. 

Is it murder to kill yourself? Is it suicide to kill another version of yourself? 

“It doesn’t matter,” the other Martin tells him. Martin’s lips, where they’d touched his, start tingling. “The only thing that matters is if you’re sure.”

“You’re me,” Martin protests. “That means I’m you. That means it’s a, uh, joint effort. We decide together. Right?”

“Not quite,” the other Martin tells him. His body disappears and then comes back into Martin’s line of sight. Like a lightbulb flickering. His eyes, light and glassy, close. “Go.”

And Martin goes.


End file.
